Thomas Sherred: Cue for Quiet

The newspapers next day couldn't make things add, as was natural. They published silly interviews with all the top engineers in the city and a good many all over the world, including the Chairman of the Board of the company where I worked, and his answer was just as asinine as the rest. All in all, it had been a good show, and I put in another letter to Naval Ordnance. I knew I had gone much further than I had intended, and I suggested they get in touch with me, if they wanted, through the personal columns of one of the Detroit newspapers. I didn't want to get into trouble with the city police. I didn't sign my name to the second letter either. And that was a mistake.

Early in the morning of the tenth I felt good. I'd been sleeping well lately, now that I was rid of the Olsens' radio, not to mention the Werners', and the Smiths'. I rolled over and squinted at the luminous hands of the' clock. Beer cheese in the icebox. Half a Dutch apple pie left over from dinner. Milk. Helen didn't wake as I eased out of bed and groped for my slippers, and the rustling and shuffling I heard as I tiptoed down the back stairs I attributed to an overbrave mouse. One of these days, I thought, I was going to have to get some traps and catch me a mouse. When I turned on the kitchen light the mouse was holding a howitzer nine inches away from my head.

"All right, you," the mouse snarled. "Reach!"

I reached. Quick.

The gunman backed to the outside door and flicked it open with one hand, never taking his eyes from me. Footsteps pounded on the back porch and hard faces filled the kitchen. One even had one of these gaspipe Sten guns, and I liked that even less than the howitzer. My pajama tops might have concealed an arsenal from the care I got when I was searched. No one said a word, and I didn't dare. Just about that time Helen got the sandman out of her eyes. Likely the noise had awakened her appetite, and she had come down to help me eat a snack. One of the gunmen heard her slippers clattering down the stairs, and a hard hand slapped over my mouth and a gun rammed viciously against my spine. Spun around and held as a human shield I had to helplessly watch her come yawning in the kitchen door. One look she got in at me, and the drawn guns, and her mouth opened for a scream that got no further than a muffled yip and a dead faint. They let her fall. The gunman took his hand from my mouth and swung me around.

"Shut up!" he snapped, although I hadn't tried to say anything.

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At the point of his gun he held me there while the rest of the hard faced crew roamed the house, upstairs and down. None of the faces did I know, and I began to wonder if behind one of those granite masks was the revengeful personality of R. C. Jones, President of Local 77, AFL. I heard footsteps pad on the back porch, and my head tried to turn in spite of myself. The gun in my back gouged a little harder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see who pushed open the screen door I hadn't got around to taking down yet. The gun in my back helped me stand up.

J. Edgar Hoover motioned to the gun and the pressure eased a trifle. His voice was reasonably unexcited, but to my present taste, ominous.

"All right. Someone go get him some pants." To me, "Your name Miller? Peter Ambrose Miller? Get that woman off the floor."

Yes, I was Peter Ambrose Miller. I agreed to that. My mouth was dry as popcorn, but I managed to ask him what this was all about.

Hoover looked at me and scratched his nose. "This is about your fingerprints being all over an anonymous letter received in Aberdeen, Maryland."

I gulped. "Oh, that. Why, I can explain-"

Hoover looked at me with the fond expression of a man who has cracked open a bad egg. "That," he said, "I doubt," and he turned on his military heel and walked out the back door. When they got me my pants I followed him. I had to.

I ended up at the Federal Building, which is a cavernous morgue, even during business hours. They gave me what might have been a comfortable chair if I hadn't had to sit in it. A young fellow was sitting opposite me with a stenographer's notebook, and I knew that any story of mine had better not be repeated two different ways. Hoover came in with a nondescript man with a hat pulled down over his eyes, who inspected me from all angles and then shook his head, a little resentfully, I thought. The hat-over-the-eyes left and I shifted nervously under those grim eyes staring at me.

"All right," said Hoover; "now we'll hear that explanation. Talk!"

So I talked.

When I finished my throat was dry and he was nodding as though he believed every word. He didn't. I asked for a cigarette and for news of my wife, and they gave me a cigarette. They told me my wife was all right, or would be, if I behaved.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll behave." They just laughed when I said that.

"Quite likely," said Hoover. "Now, let's hear that once more. Begin at the beginning."

They gave me a room all to myself, finally. For three days, maybe more, I had that room all for myself and the various people that walked in at all hours of the day and night to ask me some of the silliest questions you ever heard just as though they expected sensible answers. After that first night I didn't see J. Edgar Hoover at all, which is just as well, because I don't think he liked me one little bit. They brought me a suit with the lining in the sleeve ripped and a shirt with the cuffs turned. When I got those I began to worry all over again about Helen, because I knew she had no part in picking out the clothes they brought me. I didn't feel too chipper when they came after me in force again.

The same room, this time more crowded. Older men this time, and a few of the usual high school boys. Again we went through the same routine, and once again my voice cracked dusty dry. They were all desperately sorry for such an incurable psychopathic liar. I hadn't felt so helpless, so caught-in-a-quicksand since my days in the army.

"I'm telling you the truth, the truth. Don't you see that I've got to tell you the truth to get out of here? Don't you believe me?"

Never such disbelief outside of a courtmartial. In desperation my eyes jerked around looking for escape. They slid over, and back to, the ventilation fan purring on the wall. I sucked in a loud gasp. The blades of the fan slowed to where you could see them as individuals, and the motor housing began to smoke.

"See?" I yelled at them. "Believe me now?"

The blades came to a standstill and the black smoke oozed toward the ceiling.

"See?" I yelled again. "Look at that fan!"

Their eyes showed their astonishment. The smoke began to disappear in the stillness. "What about that? Now do you believe me?"

Maybe they did. No one said anything. They took me back to my room. About an hour or so later they came after me again. The chair felt no more comfortable than it ever had, though it was beginning to shape itself to my seat. The same faces were there, but the air was a little different this time. On the desk, where I had seen sit no one but J. Edgar Hoover were a half dozen fans, plugged to an extension cord that snaked away and lost itself in a dark corner. My ears twitched hopefully. Maybe this was going to get me out of here. One of the younger men spoke up.

"Mr. Miller," he said briskly, "can you stop these fans as you did, apparently, the other?"

I started to tell him that "apparently" wasn't the right word. One of the older men broke in.

"One moment," he said. "Can you stop any one of these fans, or all of them? Any particular one, and leave the rest alone?"

I thought I could. "Which one?" There were five fans whirring silently away.